Free Republic

The unions are gearing up for a fight – again – with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A coalition of national unions that includes grocery clerks, hotel workers, farmworkers, Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union dumped $1 million Tuesday into a campaign fund to fight a proposed water bond

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "the alien," but it's his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world. "While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year. "It was a very beautiful place and it was really green." Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party's crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday. Miyuki, 66, described...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators fumbled five probes of Bernard Madoff's operations and missed opportunities to uncover the financier's $65 billion investment fraud, a report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's inspector general said on Wednesday. The SEC received more than ample information over the years to warrant a thorough and comprehensive examination or investigation of Madoff and his firm, the report said.

An Ohio lawmaker has re-introduced legislation that would include a father's rights in the abortion decision-making process. Under Roe v. Wade, fathers are left out of the equation when a woman considers whether or not to have an abortion that would end the life of their child. Rep. John Adams, a Republican from Sidney, wants to change that and the legislation he introduced today, House Bill 252, would require the biological father's consent before an abortion can be done. The bill would apply to any abortion and would require written consent before it can be done. Adams told the Daily...

CHIPPEWA FALLS, WI – The middle tablet in the Jason Zunker memorial at the Chippewa County Courthouse must be removed within 30 days. The Chippewa County Buildings and Grounds Committee voted unanimously Tuesday morning to order the tablet removed, and the two remaining smaller tablets be pushed closer together.

Within hours after being rousted from their "safe ground" campsite in downtown Sacramento on Wednesday morning, homeless men and women were putting up new tents and preparing for another potential confrontation with police. Fifteen police officers cut a lock and entered the property on C Street between 12th and 14th streets where about 30 homeless people have slept for the past 10 days, cited them for illegal camping and seized their tents, sleeping bags and other possessions as evidence. The show of force drew TV satellite trucks, homeless advocates, attorneys and others to the property, which a local civil rights...

So I began asking myself some tough questions, especially since I've been saying that the economy can grow 3-4% a year in spite of the ugly fiscal policy environment staring us in the face. Just how easily are these deficits going to be financed? Could they effectively absorb all or most of the savings of the private sector, leaving the economy with little or no private-sector investment? Could this be the real "crowding-out" of private borrowers that became a fashionable concern during the Reagan years but in the end proved overblown? How can the economy grow if the government—a chronically...

The super-elite are the world’s international bankers and industrialist who can achieve anything they want simply because they have so much wealth that they can corrupt anything that gets in their way. If government poses a problem, they buy the government off; such is their way in most Third World countries. However, operating in First World countries requires more sophistication and manipulation, for they are set-up as democracies, often with the separation of government powers so that no single branch can control everything; this sort of checks and balances in government requires more finesse to corrupt and manipulate, for there...

A powerful suicide bomb in Afghanistan has killed the country's deputy chief of the national spy agency and 22 others. Taliban insurgents have claimed responsibility for the deadly attack. The violence comes as the United Nations has reported a significant decline in opium cultivation in the country. The illegal narcotics trade is said to be a major cause of instability in Afghanistan and is believed to be funding Taliban insurgency. The suicide bombing took place in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman. Authorities say that deputy chief of the country's powerful National Directorate for Security, Abdullah Laghmani, and other senior...

Secretary of State Clinton ordered an investigation on Tuesday into the Animal House revels of private guards at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan - including booze, hookers and other "deviant behavior." "These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said of photo and e-mail evidence of the "climate of fear and coercion" at the living quarters of ArmorGroup guards. The investigation by the State Department's inspector general follows a shocking report to Clinton by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight detailing a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the Camp Sullivan...

We arrived at the frozen river separating China and North Korea at 5 o'clock on the morning of March 17. The air was crisp and still, and there was no one else in sight. As the sun appeared over the horizon, our guide stepped onto the ice. We followed him.

Representative Ron Paul Representative Ron Paul, from the 14th District of Texas, has the nickname of "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives. That's because he is a medical doctor by profession, and will vote no on any bill that is strictly unconstitutional. These days, most bills that come out of the Congress of the United States are, from a strict interpretation, unconstitutional. So he votes 'No' a lot. In fact, he is often the only one to vote in the negative on many bills. He is refreshingly different. He doesn't compromise, trade votes, form alliances or manipulate his colleagues...

Reflections on the Kennedy Funeral Mass Written by Luiz Sergio Solimeo    Wednesday, September 2, 2009 The Mass celebrated on August 29 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Roxbury, Mass. in memory of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy is rightly causing scandal among Catholics, who see it as a posthumous glorification of the deceased Massachusetts politician, as well as a resounding approval of his pro-abortion and pro-homosexual endeavors. Leaving aside the tumultuous life of the deceased, to pay homage to someone whose political action consistently opposed Catholic morals is a grave scandal, made even graver by the use...

Here is video of Madonna seemingly losing consciousness for a few seconds during a performance in Bulgaria yesterday. She was held up by another performer on stage until she seemed to come around again and continue with the performance. She reportedly passed out again after leaving the stage. . . . . (Watch Video)

tizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) yesterday filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the names and details of the recipients of the more than $2.2 trillion in financial assistance provided by the Federal Reserve Board over the past two years. CREW filed its initial request for the records on March 3, 2009 in the wake of the Board's refusal to provide Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with this information. The Board also refused to provide the information to CREW, claiming that disclosure would stigmatize the companies seeking assistance and cause them financial harm. CREW sued...

Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a non-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood. PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret "torture programme". The American Medical Association,...

Vladimir Putin is due in Poland on Tuesday to stand with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Polish leaders to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the second world war. But this show of unity belies deep divisions about the war, its causes and its consequences. Even today, the debate remains a fraught public issue, which politicians do not leave to historians – especially not in eastern Europe. The arguments centre on the ex-Soviet Union’s role in mankind’s bloodiest conflict, not least its responsibility for starting the fighting. Mr Putin would go a long way to easing political...

At a time when security in Afghanistan is worsening and the administration is trying to shore up liberal support for the war, State Department contractors guarding the U.S. embassy in Kabul are working in a “Lord of the Flies environment,” a Washington watchdog group told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

It's no secret that I am not a big fan of Ron Paul. Moreover, I don't want to abolish the Federal Reserve, nor do I agree with his assertion that the Fed has been bad for the economy. The Fed was around all through the 20th century when the United States became an economic super power. With that in mind, it seems hard to argue that the Fed has been some terrible drag on the economy or has hurt the average American, who lives better than anyone else in the world, through failure to control inflation. That being said, I...